Lights. Camera. Prayer. A Mini-Hollywood Grows in Utah. (NYT)

"Movies made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are an important part of a film and TV ecosystem in northern Utah. And there’s not an R-rating in sight." (NYT)   @Liz_A_Harris

Movies with religious bent

may be duds, or heaven-sent.

Playing angels ain't too hard;

devils can be avant-garde.

When directors want their way,

all they have to do is pray.

Utah shoots are caffeine-free,

yet they still have energy.

What has Hollywood to lose,

cutting sex and drugs and booze?

Atheists might controvert

(but then again they might convert!)

Speak Ye Every Man the Truth

These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates
Zechariah 8:16

Does the Lord approve the Gates

we keep in the United States?

Do we send the truth abroad

or do we try for proud facade?

Our Gates of peace are just as far

away, it seems, as Zanzibar.

Peace as a river, I do pray,

will flood our land in full one day.

The Merciful Man

The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh.
Proverbs 11:17

My soul is flesh; my flesh is soul;

one sans t'other is not whole.

My flesh demands accounting cruel.

My soul seeks kindness like a jewel.

No trouble, Lord, can harrow me,

when I am merciful like Thee!

Ode to Gumbo, Chili con queso, California rolls, and Spaghetti. @timcarman @Tan_Shelly

The annals of my tummy are a long and glorious slog;

I have often nibbled daintily (or gobbled like a hog.)

My appetite is welcoming and no distinction made

between pate de foie gras and some Wyler's lemonade.

But lemme tell you sumpin 'bout the vittles I inhale;

there's four of 'em I'm partial to (and none of 'em use kale!)

Let's start with chicken gumbo, with the okra piled on high;

a dish with rice beside it makes me almost want to cry.

A chili cheese fiesta, with crisp corn chips by my side,

makes me think of heaven (and so happily I died!)

 Ya gotta have good salsa with that kind of meal, muchacho --

hot enough to roast your tongue until it is a nacho.

I think about the Beach Boys as to market I do stroll

to snag a tray on which resides my California roll.

Unctuous with mayo, it reminds me of my youth --

when happiness came easily (and didn't need vermouth.)

And then there is spaghetti, which with meatballs must be dotted;

such a dish, with crusty bread, will leave me much besotted.

Could I but have these four things for my sustenance each day,

the world with all its problems would seem very far away . . . 

The Gate

It was a Sunday when I first noticed the castle gate was in sad repair. The weathered wood was sickly gray with despair and the hinges and flanges were flaking away with canker. 
Not that I was a king or anything, and not that it was really a castle of the Robin Hood kind. But we had a moat and a drawbridge, just the same, and the gate was nearly two stories tall and quite wide. And right now I was seeing it as rusted shut and no good to man nor beast. It hadn't been opened in years, that I knew of. Everyone came in and went out of the tiny side door where the porter sullenly stewed in his foul room filled with rotted hay and red iron pipes that had never been used for anything except beating rope ends to make tow for caulking ships.
As nominal landlord of the castle, I felt that the main gate should be refurbished and opened wide during the day to invite good people from all around to enter and have converse with me and all others eager to enlarge their knowledge of things. 
I had no idea how to go about such a project. The porter was a craven ninny, too fond of his sweetened tea to stir his mind beyond the confines of his room. My parents were off to the wars, slaying foes and laying waste to farmland and orchards with a hearty goodwill. My siblings were being schooled in Duncanny, far away, in the art of brewing butter and shooting leather. I had two counselors, Fatty and Skinny, who occasionally lectured me about my immortal soul but probably knew nothing of a practical nature. Still, I went to them about the gate. At first they were nonplussed.
"What's wrong with the gate?" asked Fatty.
"Yes, what's wrong with it?" echoed Skinny. "It's a very grand gate that keeps the countryside in awe so we don't need to hire a sheriff."
"You would have to pay for a sheriff if we were forced to hire one" said Fatty condescendingly. "They don't work for free."
"I want my gate to be opened wide and welcoming, with a new coat of paint on it and the hinges polished and oiled" I told them firmly. "Hang the cost!"
"Very well, it's your funeration!" they said together and left to gather workmen, paint, and other needful items. 
I am not skilled in choosing pleasing color combinations. I like a wild disharmony in hues and patterns, which Fatty says is because of my Romany blood. So I tried to be cautious about the color of the gate. I decided on gold, with the flanges highlighted in silver.
Several dozen men were rounded up from the village and given stiff brushes to clean and smooth the wood before it was painted. They found that the hinges and flanges were not in a bad way -- they just needed a good dry scrubbing and then lubricating with goose grease.
When the work was done I commanded the gate to be thrown open as wide as possible. At first we couldn't budge it -- it had lain dormant for too long, But I made Fatty and Skinny, and even the sullen porter, help pull on the massive brass rings and slowly the gate swung all the way back with a magnificent swoosh of displaced air and dust.
I thanked the men for their help, told Fatty and Skinny to pay them off (which is when I found out the treasury was barren -- so I divided all my jewels among them), and dragged a stool from out of the milkmaid's shed to sit and watch my open gate.
I could see the village in the distance, with plumes of tired smoke sluggishly rising from broken chimney pots. Beyond the village lay a forest of dusty green trees, with little black specks I took to be birds circling around and around above it all day.  Nearby a dusty lane curved around the outside of the moat, and I saw a farmer driving a cart full of hay past the gate. I waved at him. He took off his hat and bowed his head to me. I wanted to say hello to him and invite him in, but he was already aimed and traveling with a set purpose, so I let him pass in silence.
Then a man on a horse rode across the drawbridge and entered the gate to stare down at me with a withering, supercilious expression. He was dressed much better than I was, or ever had been.
"This your place?" he demanded haughtily.
"Yessir" I answered, standing up anxiously. 
"Waste of time" he sneered briefly, and turned around. The back of his head was a hornet's nest. I'm glad he decided not to stick around.
Two little girls came wandering by, and I was bold enough to invite them through the gate. They skipped over to me, holding hands. 
"Would you two like a bowl of milk?" I asked them.
Shyly they nodded yes, so I told Fatty to bring them each a full bowl from the milkmaid's shed. 
"The milk might have straw in it" he said, eyeing the girls disapprovingly.
Arms akimbo, I ordered him to bring the milk and make it snappy.
The girls giggled as they drank up their milk, then thanked me with unsteady curtsies and ran off, still holding hands. I felt like I was the one who had drunk up the refreshing milk.
For a while there was no more traffic going up or down the lane. I didn't get bored or discontented with just sitting there waiting for something good to come through my open gate. The waiting itself was comforting to me.
Finally an old man, riding a donkey, came into view. He seemed tired and distracted, so I walked out through the gate to greet him and invite him in for the night if he needed it.
His smile made my cheeks blush. But the mood was spoiled by the sullen porter, who chose this moment to rush out of his filthy room and yell at me: "What's to become of me, now that this cursed gate is wide open? I have no work and shall be turned away to starve!"
I assured him he would not be turned out of his dirty room; he could stay there until the day he died, beating old rope into caulking tow whenever he liked. 
"I'm sorry for such unseemly behavior" I apologized to the old man on the donkey. 
"No matter" he said serenely. "I will tell you the secret of your heart tonight, if you wish."
"Oh yes!" I said happily. "Please take my room for your rest tonight. I will have some bread and milk brought for you, and a fine green robe I will give to you."
So he told me the secret of my heart, which I had always known, and I loved him for telling it to me just as I knew it was. 
The next day, after embracing the old man and giving him a woolen cap for his pendulous ears, I told Fatty and Skinny I never wanted the gate to be closed again. Not ever.
"And no sheriff do I want" I told them also. "Nothing but peace will come through that gate or go out of it until time itself drops dead."
They bowed sullenly and went to beat some rope into tow. 

Verses from Stories in Today's Washington Post -- A Facebook policy lets politicians lie in ads, leaving Democrats fearing what Trump will do -- Jane Fonda plans climate change civil disobedience on the Capitol steps -- These fish can live on land and breathe air. Authorities suggest you kill them on sight..

Donald told a little lie,

a white one, to be sure.

He told it just to keep us safe

from bad guys so impure.

And then he told another one,

and one more for the road,

until the fibs took over

and his hubris overflowed.

And now the lies are ev'rywhere

and truth is on the run.

Trump knows Facebook is his pimp;

he's having lots of fun!

@craigtimberg  @TonyRomm  @drewharwell

************************************************

Dear Jane; I hope you'll unnerstan

that I must be your biggest fan.

I love your films and workout flicks;

they're for the ages, not just chicks.

You stand up to the oligarchs

and never consort with the narcs.

But, my dear, it's time you're told

that you are stale and you are old.

If climate change you would confront

go buy a house with ocean front,

then wait inside until the day

the rising tide floats you away . . . 

@StevenMufson

********************************************

The predatory snakefish eats

most ev'ry other fish it meets;

The bluegill and the harmless carp

are snapped up by its teeth so sharp.

It breathes the air and immigrates

to further lakes in many states.

If you should see one, strike before

it gnaws away your wooden oar.

If we let this creature burgeon

soon there won't be any sturgeon!

@lateshiabeachum

With All Your Heart

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13

We do not search for what we think does not exist at all.

So in the desert we don't seek the cooling waterfall.

Or on the crashing ocean waves look for a mountain glen;

our intellects assure us we are very much wise men.

But wiser still the person who has sense enough to feel

that somewhere there's a Personage who is so very real;

so very real and caring, whom we must hunt all our days,

and worship when we find Him with a heart full of amaze.

The seeking may be easy or the searching may be hard,

but once our hearts accept Him we can never more be marred.

Clay Pots Everywhere Quenched Myanmar’s Thirst, Until They Vanished. (NYT) @hkbeech

I was once in love with a woman who wanted me to transplant a flowering thorn bush into a large clay water pot. She lay in her hammock under the areca palms watching me struggle with the project, laughing. I never cared to find out if she was laughing at me or just amused at the general tenor of the world. 
The brown clay pot held about twenty gallons of water. I pulled out the volunteer water lily and tipped the pot over. Wriggling mosquito larvae and little black snails washed over the courtyard. 
I used a hammer to drive a zinc nail into the bottom of the pot for aeration. Or rather, that's what I intended to do. The bottom of the pot was pretty thick. If I hit the hammer too hard the force of the blow would probably shatter the brittle pot entirely, so I tapped on the nail gently -- like a cobbler making expensive leather shoes for royalty. That got me nowhere. Plus the reverberation of the hammer off the nail head set my teeth on edge. An electric drill would have been the smarter idea, but I had no power tools. I had no money to buy power tools, because I spent too much on orchids and gold wire to string sea shells together. Orchids were actually pretty cheap, but we had hundreds of them scattered around on every fruit tree and palm. And I suspect the gold wire got 'recycled' by cousins who came to visit when the rice fields were dormant and burning -- so I had to keep buying more of it to string the beautiful sea shells I was convinced would sell as jewelry for an enormous profit. But the shells slowly turned a speckled brown, because I hadn't rinsed them in bleach prior to stringing them together -- so all sorts of mold and fungus mottled my jewelry until I couldn't give it away.
The brown clay water jar eventually developed a hairline crack along the bottom, of its own accord. So that took care of that.
Next I filled the bottom third with sand and broken bits of coral. Then I dug dirt up from the garden to fill up the rest, and put in the flowering thorn bush. I packed the dirt down and gave the whole shebang a good watering. 
It did well in the hot sun of the courtyard, and soon showed its true colors by shedding its disguise as an innocent little bush and turning into a vicious strangler vine -- with long sharp thorns. It wound its way around a faux marble pillar on the veranda and began its assault on the roof -- smothering air ducts and toppling the lightning rods. Fierce red ants raced up and down the main trunk, ready to inflict throbbing agony on anyone foolish enough to bend close to smell the small red flowers. At night their odor seemed to combine patchouli with Pine Sol. During the full moon Atlas moths blundered into the vine and were impaled by the thorns. Geckos swiveled up around the thorns to devour the helpless fluttering creatures.
Deep at night I heard vague rustling sounds around my bedroom window. In the morning when I went outside to investigate I found the thorn vine had crossed the entire roof and dropped down to encircle my bedroom window casements. It was getting ready to pounce. The cheap mosquito netting I hung over the open windows would never keep it in check.
"It does not like the color yellow" said the woman I loved mysteriously, when I showed her what was happening.
That was a big help.
Fortunately I escaped certain doom when my passport was revoked for beach combing and I had to head back to the colder reaches of the world. I told the woman I loved that I couldn't love her anymore, as I had a large family back home that needed me to nag them into something more than the slack jawed life of eBay sales.   
She laughed at me then, but in the corner of her eye I saw a red ant stinging her. Which made me want to forgive her. We parted the best of automatons.   

Mind Not High Things.

Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Romans 12:16.

Wisdom leaks right out of me,

and high things leave me bored.

I'd rather have consensus 

than a pile of golden hoard.

I'd prefer a low estate

instead of rude conceit

(but I admit tis very nice

when I dine sans dutch treat.)

Verses from Stories in Today's Washington Post -- A hotel called police on a black guest for ‘loitering.’ He’s suing for $10 million. -- Chinese Government Bans Interviews With NBA Players, Won't Televise Their Games in China -- How do pancakes and maple syrup get more exciting? Turn them into a cake..

Hospitality ain't what it was/Stand still and someone calls the fuzz/to put you in stir/as some bad poseur/Their reasoning is: "Just because."

@thedeannapaul  @TheArtist_MBS

**************************************************

If I were in the NBA/from China I'd stay far away/No matter how much they might pay/they shut your mouth before you play/and afterwards you cannot say/if it is night or it is day/In China censorship holds sway/not like the good old USA.

@MattBonesteel

*******************************************************

A waffle cake with maple syrup

might cause me to really bur-rup.

Such a price I'd gladly pay

for a piece to eat each day.

And if I am not mistaken,

'twould be much better with some bacon!

@BeckyKrystal